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This Will Only Hurt a Little by Busy Philipps Published by Touchstone on October 16th 2018 Genre: Nonfiction-Memoir Format: Hardcover Pages: 288 Challenge Theme: A book you meant to read in 2018 Buy on Barnes & NobleBuy on Amazon

Synopsis:Busy Philipps’s autobiographical book offers the same unfiltered and candid storytelling that her Instagram followers have come to know and love, from growing up in Scottsdale, Arizona and her painful and painfully funny teen years, to her life as a working actress, mother, and famous best friend.

Busy is the rare entertainer whose impressive arsenal of talents as an actress is equally matched by her storytelling ability, sense of humor, and sharp observations about life, love, and motherhood. Her conversational writing reminds us what we love about her on screens large and small. From film to television to Instagram, Busy delightfully showcases her wry humor and her willingness to bare it all.

“I’ve been waiting my whole life to write this book. I’m just so grateful someone asked. Otherwise, what was the point of any of it??”

Review:
Back in my youth I was pretty obsessed with celebrities & celebrity gossip. I would get People Magazine & US Weekly every single week. As I have gotten older I haven’t been as obsessed but I still follow celebrities on Instragram and keep up to date on the gossip. I know, I know but it entertains me. Because of this I love reading celebrity biographies. When it comes to a celebrity biography I like it to be part their childhood and what brought them to their career and part the world of celebrity. Philipp’s gives us both. Her childhood was definitely interesting and from how she describes herself back then she didn’t seem like someone I would have gotten along with BUT I can appreciate her honesty about her mistakes, especially mistakes with men. Overall I really enjoyed her memoir especially the fact that she did not hold anything back! She was brutally honest about her life, bad times and all, and she even used real names which made it much juicier. Most people change names of people, especially if talking about them in a negative way, but she definitely does not. I loved that! Overall this book entertained me very much!

Favorite Quotes:
“No one is going to tell you all the things you want to hear all the time. You have to know them yourself.”

“I’ve determined that just about everyone feels left out; it just comes down to how you handle it. I haven’t handled it the best, historically speaking. And truthfully, isn’t there something incredible about the fact that we all feel left out? Shouldn’t that somehow make us all feel a little less alone??”

“You can have all the money and success in the world, but when you’re a fucking asshole, you’re a fucking asshole and that’s all there is to it.”

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi Published by Random House on January 12th 2016 Genre: Nonfiction-Memoir Format: Hardcover Pages: 229 Challenge Theme: A book about death or grief Buy on Barnes & NobleBuy on Amazon

Synopsis:At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.

Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.'” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.

Review:
I really, really enjoyed this book. Paul was not only a neurosurgeon, he was also a gifted writer. To be able to be so present and accepting of his fate was very powerful to me. When you get a diagnosis of terminal cancer you can either let it ruin what time you have left or you can embrace it and make the most of the time you have left. He not only embraced it he wrote a beautiful novel while going through it. Of course this book is emotional but it is so much more than that. It is a glimpse into how you can make your life matter. I also love that his wife chose to write the afterward to close the book that Paul didn’t get to finish.

Favorite Quotes:
“Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete.”

“That message is simple: When you come to one of the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing.”

“There is a moment, a cusp, when the sum of gathered experience is worn down by the details of living. We are never so wise as when we live in this moment.”

“I began to realize that coming in such close contact with my own mortality had changed both nothing and everything. Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. But now I knew it acutely. The problem wasn’t really a scientific one. The fact of death is unsettling. Yet there is no other way to live.”

“The tricky part of illness is that, as you go through it, your values are constantly changing. You try to figure out what matters to you, and then you keep figuring it out. It felt like someone had taken away my credit card and I was having to learn how to budget. You may decide you want to spend your time working as a neurosurgeon, but two months later, you may feel differently. Two months after that, you may want to learn to play the saxophone or devote yourself to the church. Death may be a one-time event, but living with terminal illness is a process.”

“The physician’s duty is not to stave off death or return patients to their old lives, but to take into our arms a patient and family whose lives have disintegrated and work until they can stand back up and face, and make sense of, their own existence.”

“Grand illnesses are supposed to be life-clarifying. Instead, I knew I was going to die—but I’d known that before. My state of knowledge was the same, but my ability to make lunch plans had been shot to hell. The way forward would seem obvious, if only I knew how many months or years I had left. Tell me three months, I’d spend time with family. Tell me one year, I’d write a book. Give me ten years, I’d get back to treating diseases. The truth that you live one day at a time didn’t help: What was I supposed to do with that day?”

Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West Published by Hachette on May 17th 2016 Genre: Humor, Nonfiction-Memoir Format: Hardcover Pages: 260 Challenge Theme: A book about feminism Buy on Barnes & NobleBuy on Amazon

Synopsis:Coming of age in a culture that demands women be as small, quiet, and compliant as possible–like a porcelain dove that will also have sex with you–writer and humorist Lindy West quickly discovered that she was anything but.

From a painfully shy childhood in which she tried, unsuccessfully, to hide her big body and even bigger opinions; to her public war with stand-up comedians over rape jokes; to her struggle to convince herself, and then the world, that fat people have value; to her accidental activism and never-ending battle royale with Internet trolls, Lindy narrates her life with a blend of humor and pathos that manages to make a trip to the abortion clinic funny and wring tears out of a story about diarrhea.

With inimitable good humor, vulnerability, and boundless charm, Lindy boldly shares how to survive in a world where not all stories are created equal and not all bodies are treated with equal respect, and how to weather hatred, loneliness, harassment, and loss–and walk away laughing. Shrill provocatively dissects what it means to become self-aware the hard way, to go from wanting to be silent and invisible to earning a living defending the silenced in all caps.

Review:
For my reading challenge last year I tried to read a book about feminism for one of my prompts and I quit the book to choose something else. The book was way too preachy and the author just seemed mad. There is a way to express your point of view without seeming like an angry woman. Lindy does just that. She gets her point across but still manages to keep you engaged. Her humor helps do that. I found myself laughing out loud quite a bit. I don’t consider myself a feminist per se but there are a lot of issues I agree with as far as women’s rights are concerned. I enjoyed reading about the topic from someone who has very strong viewpoints but didn’t make me feel like she was trying to force her opinions on me. There were parts I didn’t agree with her on and others that were spot on for me. I would love to read her next book if/when that happens. She got a new follower in me.

Favorite Quotes:
“This is the only advice I can offer. Each time something like this happens, take a breath and ask yourself, honestly: Am I dead? Did I die? Is the world different? Has my soul splintered into a thousand shards and scattered to the winds? I think you’ll find, in nearly every case, that you are fine. Life rolls on. No one cares. Very few things—apart from death and crime—have real, irreversible stakes, and when something with real stakes happens, humiliation is the least of your worries.”

“Women matter. Women are half of us. When you raise every woman to believe that we are insignificant, that we are broken, that we are sick, that the only cure is starvation and restraint and smallness; when you pit women against one another, keep us shackled by shame and hunger, obsessing over our flaws rather than our power and potential; when you leverage all of that to sap our money and our time—that moves the rudder of the world. It steers humanity toward conservatism and walls and the narrow interests of men, and it keeps us adrift in waters where women’s safety and humanity are secondary to men’s pleasure and convenience.”

“I say no to people who prioritize being cool over being good. I say no to misogynists who want to weaponize my body against me. I say no to men who feel entitled to my attention and reverence, who treat everything the light touches as a resource for them to burn. I say no to religious zealots who insist that I am less important than an embryo. I say no to my own instinct to stay quiet. It’s a way of kicking down the boundaries that society has set up for women – be compliant, be a caregiver, be quiet – and erecting my own. I will do this; I will not do that. You believe in my subjugation; I don’t have to be nice to you. I am busy. My time is not a public commodity.”

“I reject the notion that thinness is the goal, that thin = better—that I am an unfinished thing and that my life can really start when I lose weight. That then I will be a real person and have finally succeeded as a woman. I am not going to waste another second of my life thinking about this. I don’t want to have another fucking conversation with another fucking woman about what she’s eating or not eating or regrets eating or pretends to not regret eating to mask the regret. OOPS I JUST YAWNED TO DEATH.”

“I believe unconditionally in the right of people with uteruses to decide what grows inside of their body and feeds on their blood and endangers their life and reroutes their future. There are no ‘good’ abortions and ‘bad’ abortions, there are only pregnant people who want them and pregnant people who don’t, pregnant people who have access and support and pregnant people who face institutional roadblocks and lies.”

“For me, the process of embodying confidence was less about convincing myself of my own worth and more about rejecting and unlearning what society had hammered into me.”

“We’re all building our world, right now, in real time. Let’s build it better.”

A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy by Sue Klebold Published by Crown Publishing Group on February 15th 2016 Genre: Nonfiction-Memoir Format: Paperback Pages: 280 Challenge Theme: True Crime Buy on Barnes & NobleBuy on Amazon

Synopsis:
On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Over the course of minutes, they would kill twelve students and a teacher and wound twenty-four others before taking their own lives.

For the last sixteen years, Sue Klebold, Dylan’s mother, has lived with the indescribable grief and shame of that day. How could her child, the promising young man she had loved and raised, be responsible for such horror? And how, as his mother, had she not known something was wrong? Were there subtle signs she had missed? What, if anything, could she have done differently?

These are questions that Klebold has grappled with every day since the Columbine tragedy. In A Mother’s Reckoning, she chronicles with unflinching honesty her journey as a mother trying to come to terms with the incomprehensible. In the hope that the insights and understanding she has gained may help other families recognize when a child is in distress, she tells her story in full, drawing upon her personal journals, the videos and writings that Dylan left behind, and on countless interviews with mental health experts.

Filled with hard-won wisdom and compassion, A Mother’s Reckoning is a powerful and haunting book that sheds light on one of the most pressing issues of our time. And with fresh wounds from the Newtown and Charleston shootings, never has the need for understanding been more urgent.

Review:
I remember the Columbine shooting like it was yesterday. I was a junior in high school and couldn’t imagine if something like that were to happen at my school. That was also a time where things like that just weren’t the norm like they, unfortunately, are in our society today. Back then it was shocking, now we are sad but never surprised by the mass shootings that happen in our country. When it comes to a child committing these atrocities the first thing people want to do is point a finger at the parents. While that is a natural reaction, and in some case a legitimate cause, it is often misplaced blame. I am sure writing this book was beyond difficult for Sue. Not only have to relive that time but also the oppositions she must have gotten from others and the backlash for people who believe she shouldn’t profit from this story. All the book proceeds are being donated to causes that help research and focus on mental health so in reality she is doing this to HELP other parents and I commend her for that. I really enjoyed reading her insight and I know that this book will help parents to recognize these own traits in their children, hopefully before it is too late. Mental health research and care is severely lacking in this country so if this book can help just one parent be able to reach out and help their child then it was worth the struggle to write it and backlash she probably got for doing so. It also helped to make me realize that first and foremost Dylan was someone’s son and to think that his parent couldn’t or shouldn’t mourn for him, no matter what awful act he committed, just isn’t right. This book helps open your eyes from the perspective of a parent for, who all intents and purposes, provided a near perfect upbringing and yet her child still did the unthinkable. Definitely worth the read.

There was one page in this book that really stood out to me in regards to how the media treats these stories versus how they SHOULD treat these stories. It is a little lengthy but it is exactly how I feel every time a mass shooting happens and I watch how the media makes it worse:

“Meg Moritz, a journalist and professor who was looked closely at the media coverage of Columbine, reminded me that the journalists in question are often making split-second decisions under less-than-optimal circumstances. Even so, it’s not unreasonable to expect legitimate news organizations to follow best-practice guidelines.

Many of these guidelines are “don’ts.” Don’t show images of the shooter, particularly ones of him with weapons, or in the outfit he chose to carry out the massacre. Don’t show the weapons used, or other evidence. Don’t endlessly repeat the name of the shooter; instead, refer to “the killer” or “the perpetrator.” Don’t give airtime or publish the videos they make (like the Basement Tapes) or manifestos posted to their social media accounts. Don’t compare the killer to other killers, particularly by putting emphasis on how many people they have killed. Tufekci believe that numbers-how many dead and injured, the number of bullets fired-and photographs are particularly inflammatory, as they provide a benchmark for competition. Don’t sensationalize the violence or the body count-“the most people killed and injured in the country’s history!” Don’t oversimply the motivations behind the act.

Most important, don’t inadvertently makes heroes of the killers. It seems obvious, and yet when an event like this happens, you can’t avoid detailed (and, I would argue, fetishistic) descriptions of the weapons used, how the killers hid their arsenals, what they did and ate on that fateful day, exactly what they wore. Their names become household names. We know their favorite foods, video games, movies, and bands. These details may eventually emerge, of course; leaks happen, and the Internet is the Internet. But it these images and details accelerate and inspire violence, then they should not be endlessly repeated on CNN.”

Amen!!!

Favorite Quotes:
“The ultimate message of this book is terrifying: you may not know your own children, and, worse yet, your children may be unknowable to you. The stranger you fear may be your own son or daughter.”

“We teach our kids the importance of good dental care, proper nutrition, and financial responsibility. How many of us teach our children to monitor their own brain health, or know how to do it ourselves?”

“I would ask him to forgive me, for being his mother and never knowing what was going on inside his head, for not being able to help him, for not being the person that he could confide in.”

“Asking ‘why’ only makes us feel hopeless. Asking ‘how’ points the way forward, and shows us what we must do”

“I failed to understand as a parent until it was too late: that anyone can be suffering and in need of expert care, regardless of how they act, what they say, or who they are. Those who are suffering can appear for all the world to be doing well, their private pain masked by accomplishments and triumphs.”

“Hatred does not obliterate love. Indeed, the two are in constant fellowship.”

Talking as Fast as I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls, and Everything in Between by Lauren Graham Published by Ballantine Books on November 29th 2016 Genre: Nonfiction-Memoir Format: Hardcover Pages: 209 Buy on Barnes & NobleBuy on Amazon

Synopsis:In this collection of personal essays, the beloved star of Gilmore Girls and Parenthood reveals stories about life, love, and working as a woman in Hollywood—along with behind-the-scenes dispatches from the set of the new Gilmore Girls, where she plays the fast-talking Lorelai Gilmore once again.

In Talking as Fast as I Can, Lauren Graham hits pause for a moment and looks back on her life, sharing laugh-out-loud stories about growing up, starting out as an actress, and, years later, sitting in her trailer on the Parenthood set and asking herself, “Did you, um, make it?” She opens up about the challenges of being single in Hollywood (“Strangers were worried about me; that’s how long I was single!”), the time she was asked to audition her butt for a role, and her experience being a judge on Project Runway (“It’s like I had a fashion-induced blackout”).

In “What It Was Like, Part One,” Graham sits down for an epic Gilmore Girls marathon and reflects on being cast as the fast-talking Lorelai Gilmore. The essay “What It Was Like, Part Two” reveals how it felt to pick up the role again nine years later, and what doing so has meant to her.

Some more things you will learn about Lauren: She once tried to go vegan just to bond with Ellen DeGeneres, she’s aware that meeting guys at awards shows has its pitfalls (“If you’re meeting someone for the first time after three hours of hair, makeup, and styling, you’ve already set the bar too high”), and she’s a card-carrying REI shopper (“My bungee cords now earn points!”).

Including photos and excerpts from the diary Graham kept during the filming of the recent Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, this book is like a cozy night in, catching up with your best friend, laughing and swapping stories, and—of course—talking as fast as you can.

Review:
I read Lauren Graham’s fiction novel, Someday Someday Maybe, and I didn’t really like it but I love memoirs and I love Lauren Graham so when I found out she wrote this book I really wanted to read it. I am glad I did because I really enjoyed it! I am not really a fan of audio books but I think this would be even better in audio form. I think Lauren reading her book would make it that much more enjoyable. I love her stories and found myself chuckling often. It also made me want to go back and watch both Gilmore Girls & Parenthood. Like I need more TV to watch! I am hoping like the Gilmore Girls reboot there is a sequel to this book. Great read!

Favorite Quotes:
“Life doesn’t often spell things out for you or give you what you want exactly when you want it, otherwise it wouldn’t be called life, it would be called vending machine.”

“As my friend Oliver Platt used to say to me about hopes and dreams I’d share with him: ‘It’s coming, just not on your time frame.”

“I guess what I’m saying is, let’s keep lifting each other up. It’s not lost on me that two of the biggest opportunities I’ve had to break into the next level were given to me by successful women in positions of power. If I’m ever in that position and you ask me, “Who?” I’ll do my best to say, “You” too. But in order to get there, you may have to break down the walls of whatever it is that’s holding you back first. Ignore the doubt—it’s not your friend—and just keep going, keep going, keep going.”

“I still find that, in general, having a plan is, well, a good plan. But when my carefully laid plan laughed at me, rather than clutch at it too tightly I just made a new one, even if it was one that didn’t immediately make sense. In blindly trying a different path, I accidentally found one that worked better. So don’t let your plan have the last laugh, but laugh last when your plan laughs, and when your plan has the last laugh, laugh back, laughing!”

“Sometimes the idea of doing something is the most fun part, and after you go through with it, you feel deflated because you realize you’re back to looking for the next thrill.”

Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling Published by Crown Archetype on September 15th 2015 Genre: Nonfiction-Memoir Format: Hardcover Pages: 228 Challenge Theme: A memoir or journal Buy on Barnes & NobleBuy on Amazon

Synopsis:In Why Not Me?, Kaling shares her ongoing journey to find contentment and excitement in her adult life, whether it’s falling in love at work, seeking new friendships in lonely places, attempting to be the first person in history to lose weight without any behavior modification whatsoever, or most important, believing that you have a place in Hollywood when you’re constantly reminded that no one looks like you.

In “How to Look Spectacular: A Starlet’s Confessions,” Kaling gives her tongue-in-cheek secrets for surefire on-camera beauty, (“Your natural hair color may be appropriate for your skin tone, but this isn’t the land of appropriate–this is Hollywood, baby. Out here, a dark-skinned woman’s traditional hair color is honey blonde.”) “Player” tells the story of Kaling being seduced and dumped by a female friend in L.A. (“I had been replaced by a younger model. And now they had matching bangs.”) In “Unlikely Leading Lady,” she muses on America’s fixation with the weight of actresses, (“Most women we see onscreen are either so thin that they’re walking clavicles or so huge that their only scenes involve them breaking furniture.”) And in “Soup Snakes,” Kaling spills some secrets on her relationship with her ex-boyfriend and close friend, B.J. Novak (“I will freely admit: my relationship with B.J. Novak is weird as hell.”)

Mindy turns the anxieties, the glamour, and the celebrations of her second coming-of-age into a laugh-out-loud funny collection of essays that anyone who’s ever been at a turning point in their life or career can relate to. And those who’ve never been at a turning point can skip to the parts where she talks about meeting Bradley Cooper.

Review:
Like her first book this one made me laugh out loud a lot. The stories in this book are based around her life as the creator of her show ‘The Mindy Project’ and dealing with the fame that comes with that. I love her humor and she makes you want to be her friend. Quick, entertaining read!

Favorites Quotes:
“If you’re reading this, you’re probably a woman. Or perhaps you’re a gay man getting a present for your even gayer friend. Maybe you accidentally bought this thinking it was the Malala book.”

“Work hard, know your shit, show your shit, and then feel entitled. Listen to no one except the two smartest and kindest adults you know, and that doesn’t always mean your parents. If you do that, you will be fine.”

“People get scared when you try to do something, especially when it looks like you’re succeeding. People do not get scared when you’re failing. It calms them. But when you’re winning, it makes them feel like they’re losing or, worse yet, that maybe they should’ve tried to do something too, but now it’s too late. And since they didn’t, they want to stop you. You can’t let them.”

“Who is the beauty icon that inspires you the most? Is it Sophia Loren? Audrey Hepburn? Halle Berry? Mine is Nosferatu, because that vampire taught me my number-one and number-two favorite beauty tricks of all time: avoid the sun at all costs and always try to appear shrouded in shadows.”

“I can’t for the life of me not eat something that I want to eat. You know how if you turned on a faucet in your sink to wash your hands, the idea of leaving the bathroom without turning it off is insane? That’s how I am about ignoring delicious food.”

“I will leave you with one last piece of advice, which is: If you’ve got it, flaunt it. And if you don’t got it? Flaunt it. ’Cause what are we even doing here if we’re not flaunting it?”

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling Published by Crown Archetype on November 1st 2011 Genre: Nonfiction-Memoir Format: Hardcover Pages: 222 Challenge Theme: A funny book Buy on Barnes & NobleBuy on Amazon

Synopsis:Mindy Kaling has lived many lives: the obedient child of immigrant professionals, a timid chubster afraid of her own bike, a Ben Affleck–impersonating Off-Broadway performer and playwright, and, finally, a comedy writer and actress prone to starting fights with her friends and coworkers with the sentence “Can I just say one last thing about this, and then I swear I’ll shut up about it?”

Perhaps you want to know what Mindy thinks makes a great best friend (someone who will fill your prescription in the middle of the night), or what makes a great guy (one who is aware of all elderly people in any room at any time and acts accordingly), or what is the perfect amount of fame (so famous you can never get convicted of murder in a court of law), or how to maintain a trim figure (you will not find that information in these pages). If so, you’ve come to the right book, mostly!

In Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, Mindy invites readers on a tour of her life and her unscientific observations on romance, friendship, and Hollywood, with several conveniently placed stopping points for you to run errands and make phone calls. Mindy Kaling really is just a Girl Next Door—not so much literally anywhere in the continental United States, but definitely if you live in India or Sri Lanka.

Review:
I have said that I love celebrity autobiographies and Mindy’s did not disappoint. At only 222 pages, this is a quick, funny read if you are looking for something light. The last book I read was very heavy so this was a great choice for my next read. As said by Mindy, “This book will take you two days to read. Did you even see the cover? It’s mostly pink. If you’re reading this book every night for months, something is not right.”

The book is a collection of short essays/stories chronicling Mindy’s life from childhood through her adult life. She has a self-deprecating sense of humor that will make you laugh out loud so make sure no one is around you when you are reading or they may think you are a little crazy. That is unless they are a reader themselves and then they will totally get it. I already have her next book on hold at the library and I am sure I will love it just as much as this one.

Favorite Quotes:
“There is no sunrise so beautiful that it is worth waking me up to see it.”

“You should know I disagree with a lot of traditional advice. For instance, they say the best revenge is living well. I say it’s acid in the face—who will love them now?”

“I say if you love something, set it in a small cage and pester and smother it with love until it either loves you back or dies.”

“I’m only marginally qualified to be giving advice at all. My body mass index is certainly not ideal, I frequently use my debit card to buy things that cost less than three dollars because I never have cash on me, and my bedroom is so untidy it looks like vandals ransacked the Anthropologie Sale section. I’m kind of a mess.”

“People get scared when you try to do something, especially when it looks like you’re succeeding. People do not get scared when you’re failing. It calms them. But when you’re winning, it makes them feel like they’re losing or, worse yet, that maybe they should’ve tried to do something too, but now it’s too late. And since they didn’t, they want to stop you. You can’t let them.”

“I don’t want to hear about the endless struggles to keep sex exciting, or the work it takes to plan a date night. I want to hear that you guys watch every episode of The Bachelorette together in secret shame, or that one got the other hooked on Breaking Bad and if either watches it without the other, they’re dead meat. I want to see you guys high-five each other like teammates on a recreational softball team you both do for fun.” (This is totally Luke & I!!)

“People’s reaction to me is sometimes “Uch, I just don’t like her. I hate how she thinks she is so great.” But it’s not that I think I’m so great. I just don’t hate myself. I do idiotic things all the time and I say crazy stuff I regret, but I don’t let everything traumatize me. And the scary thing I have noticed is that some people really feel uncomfortable around women who don’t hate themselves. So that’s why you need to be a little bit brave.”

Superficial: More Adventures from The Andy Cohen Diaries by Andy Cohen Published by St. Martin's Press on December 13th 2016 Genre: Nonfiction-Memoir Format: Hardcover Pages: 357 Challenge Theme: A guilty pleasure book Buy on Barnes & NobleBuy on Amazon

Synopsis:The megapopular host of Watch What Happens: Live and executive producer of The Real Housewives franchise is back, better than ever, and telling stories that will keep his publicist up at night.

Since the publication of his last book, Andy has toured the country with his sidekick Anderson Cooper, hit the radio waves with his own Sirius station, Radio Andy, appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher despite his mother’s conviction he was not intellectually prepared, hosted NBC’s Primetime New Year’s Eve special, guest edited Entertainment Weekly, starred in Bravo’s Then & Now with Andy Cohen, offended celebrities with his ongoing case of foot-in-mouth disease, and welcomed home Teresa “Namaste” Giudice, from a brief stint in jail. Hopping from the Hamptons to the Manhattan dating world, the dog park to the red carpet, Cardinals superfan and mama’s boy Andy Cohen, with Wacha in tow, is the kind of star that fans are dying to be friends with. This book gives them that chance.

If The Andy Cohen Diaries was deemed “the literary equivalent of a Fresca and tequila” by Jimmy Fallon, Superficialis a double: dishier, juicier, and friskier. In this account of his escapades—personal, professional, and behind-the-scenes—Andy tells us not only what goes down, but exactly what he thinks of it.

Review:
I LOVE everything Bravo & Andy Cohen…..they are my ultimate guilty pleasure. I am actually watching Watch What Happens: Live as I write this. I have read all three of Andy’s books and they are exactly what you would expect them to be, full of celebrity stories and all about his fabulous life. I love how he doesn’t take himself too seriously and will be the first one to tell you when he is being a bit shallow. I may like this book because I kind of want Andy Cohen’s life. He gets to live in NY, rub elbows with celebrities, travel all the time, and lives a fab life. I mean one of his bffs is Carrie Bradshaw! If you want an entertaining read go for it, if you are easily offended or don’t like shows like the Housewives maybe skip it.

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah Published by Spiegel & Grau on November 15th 2016 Genre: Nonfiction-Memoir Format: Hardcover Pages: 288 Challenge Theme: A book by someone who isn't a writer Buy on Barnes & NobleBuy on Amazon

Synopsis:Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle.

Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.

The eighteen personal essays collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic, and deeply affecting. Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Trevor illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and unflinching honesty. His stories weave together to form a moving and searingly funny portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in a dangerous time, armed only with a keen sense of humor and a mother s unconventional, unconditional love.

Review:
I love reading autobiographies, especially from celebrities. I am somewhat celebrity/entertainment obsessed and will read anyone’s autobiography because I find them so fascinating. I wasn’t aware of who Trevor Noah was until he took over The Daily Show and I had no idea how colorful his childhood was. Unlike a lot of celebrity memoirs I have read, this book didn’t focus on how he made it in show business which I actually really liked. That made me feel like there is so much more of his story to tell and I look forward to his next book. I am calling it right now, he will write at least one more.

Favorite Quotes:
“We tell people to follow their dreams, but you can only dream of what you can imagine, and, depending on where you come from, your imagination can be quite limited.”

“I don’t regret anything I’ve ever done in life, any choice that I’ve made. But I’m consumed with regret for the things I didn’t do, the choices I didn’t make, the things I didn’t say. We spend so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to. “What if…” “If only…” “I wonder what would have…” You will never, never know, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days.”

“We live in a world where we don’t see the ramifications of what we do to others because we don’t live with them. It would be a whole lot harder for an investment banker to rip off people with subprime mortgages if he actually had to live with the people he was ripping off. If we could see one another’s pain and empathize with one another, it would never be worth it to us to commit the crimes in the first place.”

“Learn from your past and be better because of your past,” she would say, “but don’t cry about your past. Life is full of pain. Let the pain sharpen you, but don’t hold on to it. Don’t be bitter.”

“Trevor, remember a man is not determined by how much he earns. You can still be a man of the house and earn less than your woman. Being a man is not what you have, it’s who you are. Being more of a man doesn’t mean your woman has to be less than you.”